It didn’t take long for Mar to return. He was brimming with excitement when he approached Grizz and Orou, presenting a set of keys to them. The keys were old and rust, Orou wondered if they could even serve their intended purpose anymore, but Mar assured them that everything was perfectly fine. No one paid them any attention as they left the inn and followed Mar. The whole city was like a maze, in a few minutes, Orou wasn’t sure where he was anymore and if he could make his way back to the inn even if he wanted to. Half an hour later, they arrived at Wilmot street which was half ruined and abandoned. The stone underneath them was cracked and it would be difficult for any regular beastmen to move forwards without tripping, though it proved to be no trouble to the two of them.

“This poor place was chosen as the battleground between boss’ gang and the sparrows. It was a bustling place when it was managed by the sparrow and boss really wants to repair it, but we simply don’t have the time right now,” Mar explained as he hopped over a pit that went down for several meters. Grizz did the same as Mar, but Orou simply slithered around it, unsure why there was a need to jump in the first place. Everywhere Mar went, Grizz followed and did the same as he. Mar seemed to be intentionally picking the roughest part of the road and Orou was wondering if perhaps this was similar to the sparring Orou and Grizz did, only by using obstacles and not actually fighting.

Grizz easily kept up with Mar until eventually, they arrived at a run-down shop. It might have had a flashy sign at one point and the walls might have been painted purple before, but the shop only had traces of its former glory. Grizz turned the key and the door opened with a squeak. Surprisingly, the interior didn’t look as bad as the exterior. The store had a wooden counter, on it laid a crystal ball and some tarot cards with strange drawings on them. There were several bookcases that covered the wall, the books boasting various different titles that were difficult for Orou to read.

Mar peered into the shop but didn’t step into it. He looked at Grizz before shouting: “I’ll be off now, you know where to find me if you need me. I’ll be back with the information a bit later,” and without further ado, Mar turned and left, leaving behind Grizz and Orou to explore the shop before them. Grizz went on into a different room as Orou was inspecting the things lying on the table. Activating his spirit sight, he saw that within the crystal ball, there were a great many spirits trapped inside. Most of them were simply staying in place, some of them were doing their best in attempts to escape, though it did them no good. As he looked around the shop in general, he found that there was a greater concentration of spirits here, which might be a reason why the interior was still preserved.

Orou conjured a ball of light in the air and inwardly, he marvelled at how easy it was to control the spirits here. The first thing he did was to try and form the star by stretching and deforming the spirits, but Orou had gotten his hopes up in vain as he still had no results. Orou looked at the crystal ball and, deciding to play with it later, he went into the room that Grizz was in. It looked like it was the fortune teller’s bedroom as a large bed, completely covered by purple satin. Grizz sat down on the bed and sighed, saying to no one in particular: “I said for him to get a comfortable place but this wasn’t what I was expecting.”

The two of them scoured every single room of this place in search of anything interesting or valuable, but the only exciting thing Orou saw in this place was the crystal ball. Grizz picked it up in his hands and the spirits inside of it shook and scattered about. Grizz shrugged and put it back down once he saw that there was no immediate effect and asked Orou: “What’s so interesting about this crystal ball?”

Orou answered him the best he could, that is, by not answering at all. He formed a tiny formation inside of the crystal ball of the ball of light spell and as he was preparing to will the spirits inside of the crystal ball to move, their did so on their own accord. Both Orou and Grizz were quite startled when out of nowhere, the crystal ball lit up. It did nothing more than light up, but just thing made Orou excited about what one could do with this. He started thinking of the countless possibilities when he realised that he didn’t really have a formation small enough to fit inside.

He stared at it long and hard before finally, realisation hit him. Concentrating solely on orb before him, he started conjuring the formation of a five-pointed star inside of the crystal orb. Only five spirits reacted to the formation, each of the five spirits went to the five points of the star and slowly but surely, the spirits started stretching out towards the middle. Orou observed this with rapt interest, wanting to find out how he could replicate the process. After several seconds of this, the spirits had finally formed the form of a star. The formation brightly flashed for a few seconds before the five spirits were simply gone, in their place stood a small spirit that was both real and fake at the same time.

Orou wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was simply a trick on his eyes or if the spirit was truly there. Simply looking at the spot before him, there was completely nothing there, but as soon as his attention shifted elsewhere, there was a tiny spirit, just on the edge of his vision. Orou tried to will the spot where he had summoned the spirit, but nothing responded to his commands. Orou tried his best to observe it without paying it any attention but the spirit proved to be too elusive in the end. If Izz was here, he would likely know what to do but Orou simply didn’t know enough about spirits to know what was the deal with the spirit

He tried forming another formation inside of the crystal ball but no matter what he did, the spirit simply didn’t respond. If he could, he would let the crystal ball conjure the five complicated runic circles by itself and see what the spell did, but the circles had to be centered on himself or else it simply wouldn’t work. Orou decided to try forming the illusion spirit himself, picking out five spirits which he felt were the most energetic. He created the formation of the star and guided the five spirits to their respective positions. This was where the hard part began, he had to concentrate on all five of the spirits floating in the air. He willed the five spirits to both stop and move towards the middle, gradually increasing the pressure both on spirits and on his mind.

The five spirits desperately wanted to move to the middle, but Orou’s will held them in place. It was slow work and Orou would have given up by now if he wasn’t seeing signs of progress, the spirits were slowly stretching out in order to reach the middle. This was the point at which Orou’s will simply cracked and he was left dazed on the floor for several minutes after. The pressure of both keeping the spirits from moving, making sure the spirits move in the right direction and resisting the pressure that was created when the spirits tried to reform themselves was simply too much. He lied on the floor and simply thought about what he could do and what he had to do in order to make the spirits obey him, but his mind was firm on the fact that he had to acquire a greater spirit and experiment with it.

Orou wasn’t sure how long he had been experimenting with the crystal orb, but when he turned around to look at Grizz, he had seen that Grizz had already unpacked and was preparing to head out once more. “Finally, I could’ve simply left without you but where’s the fun in that, we’re off to scout the palace,” Grizz beckoned Orou to come with him as he opened the door and stepped outside. Orou took one last look at the crystal ball before taking off with Grizz, determined to solve the secret of the star some day.